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SMBC Delivers Their Most Successful Windows Upgrade

Customer Overview

Client: SMBC

Revenue: $6.5B

Industry: Financial Services

Employees: 80,000

Use Case: Workspace Modernization

Business Outcomes
  • One year’s worth of labor for one resource eliminated
  • Reduced security and compliance exposure
  • Accurate application inventory via integration with existing systems
  • Ongoing management of the Windows environment

PROJECT OVERVIEW

SMBC, one of the largest banks in Japan, was faced with the challenge of upgrading all desktops and laptops across their US operations. Having experienced the difficulty of executing this program manually in the past, the firm chose ReadyWorks to reduce delivery cost, manage risk, and accelerate program timelines. 

CHALLENGE

With the popularization of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Shadow IT, maintaining an accurate application inventory had become an exponentially more difficult task for an endpoint management team. Couple this with a mixed physical/virtual desktop environment and the need to coordinate thousands of end users and the job of upgrading all US based desktops is daunting. This multi-national bank sought a solution that would help them understand and maintain their application inventory so they could certify their applications for Windows 10 in advance of their end user upgrade.

OBJECTIVES

  • Use various data sources to build an application inventory 
  • Maintain that inventory throughout the life of the program 
  • Use application readiness as the basis for building upgrade schedules and communication plans 

SELECTION PROCESS

The firm recognized that they required a purpose-built system to collect and analyze their application data. Pulling this information from multiple systems and then analyzing with spreadsheets was out of the question given their staff and budget constraints. They wanted a platform which could rapidly integrate with other systems, rationalize their applications lists, and then ultimately automate as much of their upgrade program as possible. 

The firm built an upgrade pilot program to test their new Windows 10 build and used ReadyWorks as the command and control platform. Based upon the success of this pilot program they chose ReadyWorks to manage the production migration. 

SOLUTION

The Windows 10 migration was the fastest and least disruptive in firm history. The Infrastructure Manager noted that ReadyWorks “Saved his team a year of work” particularly in organizing, managing, and automating the application certification process. The end user experience was also superior to any prior migration which was attributed to the quality of the applications, the ability to self-schedule their upgrade, and the overall professionalism with which the program was executed. Moving forward the firm plans to integrate ReadyWorks into their ongoing digital transformation strategy. 

APPLICATION RATIONALIZATION

Application lists were built using a number of data sources which captured locally installed and remotely accessed services.

WINDOWS SERVICING STATUS

Windows Servicing reports allow the firm to manage their twice-yearly Windows updates.

ANALYTICS

Real time application readiness reports allowed the reduced project team to analyze data and react rapidly.

Accelerate IT program delivery while reducing costs and security risks.

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